Jons 99 Tacoma Build

Being a Senior in High School starting this build, I thought I’d start to share this adventure now!

I first bought Dakota on November 18th 2017 as a birthday present to myself. I grew up watching my dad crawl in his 85 4Runner (only gen to have solid front axle and fuel injection) and had always wanted a Toyota of my own. I have a couple buddies who share my love for Tacoma’s, but I thought it would be better to share my journey and adventures with an entire Tacoyota community. I hope you all enjoy the updates and journey!

The day I bought her




Next I decided to upgrade my suspension and get ready for crawling. I bought an Old Man Emu 3” kit

Installing the kit




How she looked with the lift



Next thing I wanted to do was completely repaint her. I’ve always been a fan of the quicksand Taco’s so I wanted to kind of replicate that look. Little did I know, doing the job myself would take a LOT more work than I expected

I started by wet sanding




After the sanding I had a few body dents I needed to take care of so I taught myself how to bondo

Filled, sanded and primered




After completely bondo/sanding the truck, I found out the whole cab had lacquer check. These are very deep cracks in the paint that are like razor scratches and cannot be painted over or filled with primer


So.. I had to sand the whole cab (minus the bed) to bare metal to get rid of the laquer check

The horror began...




After the cab was completely sanded down to bare metal, I took it to the shop at my school to finish up the body work needed and the paint prep

The masking began





After finishing the masking, shooting self etching primer, epoxy primer and guide coat finally began





Sanding the guide coat had to be the single most tedious and cramp inducing thing I’ve ever done, but all I could think to myself was, “it will be worth it” over and over again!

Guide coat sanded and flat


And last but not least.. we painted!


Final product!